I said it was an inside joke that Spam has, not that it was a club for Spam. If it was only for Spam, we'd only have Spammers in the group. If it was only for Spam, this thread wouldn't be global. If it was only for Spam, discussions about it wouldn't take place in nearly every subforum.

Get your head outta your ass.

So you can yell at him about that and how it doesn't matter since the majority of people are from spam since obviously people from spam are going to lead this forum to ruin and destruction, the motherfuckers!

Dorian wrote:Here's the suggestion to improve things then: Get rid of the Gold club.

That would be an improvement.

It is unnecessary. We have so many active mods now that they should be able to handle the job of improving the forum or whatever.

When did you stop being a mod? I ask because I want you to know just how wrong you are. The Floodgates raised? Sure, easy. No problem. No forum growth, but no problem. Want me to turn them off for a day to see how many bots we ban in the next 24 hours?

If you want input from forumers about how to improve the forum, then perhaps make a thread like this one and leave it stickied where people can just go and suggest things and discuss said changes. Who gives a shit if they're a veteran or if they've been here a week. All that really matters is the quality of their ideas/suggestions.

I don't want people to come into this forum and abuse an "anybody with an idea post here" thread because those threads get overlooked. They have in the past, and the only reason this one isn't is because of decisions I've made to make it hard to avoid. So people who want to do things with the community should be able to have some way to voice concerns that matter to them, having demonstrated being a part of the community, in a place where they won't get bogged down by LOLOLOLOL.

No matter how many times you say 'it's not going to turn into an elitist club' it's always going to look that way to outsiders. What Bob said pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Does it? Let's see.

BobSagat wrote:If your intention was to create a club based around creating a better forum then having a club calling itself the Gold Card club is of course going to reek of elitism. It's a title that immediately elevates yourselves as betters.

In the CURRENT GLOBAL RULES. Veterans are unknowable to newbies but told to be given respect. The only way a Newbie can recognize a Veteran is by post count and join date. Newbies are to be assumed naive about the forums, and might not understand the importance of a Veteran through those concepts. Color of any sort would help reduce the amount of times a moderator would have to come to a thread because a newbie yelled FUCK OFF at a Veteran trying to help. And since we plan on having multiple colors, this issue becomes more complex than simply one grade of elitism. Hence caste system.

The gold color that clashes against the entire aesthetic of the website is part of that problem, it's really no better than just having a neon pink title. It's only purpose is to scream for everyone's attention. And for what purpose exactly do you need such an obnoxious color? To inform everyone that you're part of the exclusive club and everyone else isn't?

jesus christ i just picked that particular gold color at random. Valhallen is scientifically fucking measuring the clash on a redistribution of colors to less obtrusive under SHIFTING FORUM STYLE SHEETS.

Moderators have their names colored so that people understand when a post is speaking with authority. Having ordinary forum members given colored names over others serves no purpose other than to show off.

and to be able to have veterans solve issues before mods need to is showing off?

You can still do all you guys intend to do with improving the forums, but having your names colored gold does nothing to serve that purpose.

And I disagree. Back to Dorian.

Dorian wrote:The colored name has no purpose. If you're that interested in helping the forum you should do so without the incentive of having a different colored name.

It's not incentive. It is indicative of that user having done something right, yes, but ultimately, none of this matters, which is why Gold Card people would be held to very strict standards to remain gold, so as to prevent the elitism of which you are so very fucking afraid.

I'm not really seeing the gold forum being used anyway. If changes are coming then shouldn't those people be involved if that's what the whole intent of the gold club is? I don't see much discussion in there about anything in particular. But that's not really a complaint. I'd prefer the mods to be the ones to have the discussions and make the decisions.

The mods do discuss things, but unless you want me to mod MORE people, the majority of which would still be from Spam, we need another way for users to make suggestions in a serious environment, for which the idea of a hidden senate would be ideal.

No matter how many times we tell you this is only a test version of something much more complicated, no matter how many times we explain that the only punitive measure we make in such a system is a stalled advancement by one or more criterion, you all want to shit on it because you don't believe, ultimately, that we're competent enough to handle it. I get it. So jump from the sinking ship, if you feel that this reorganization will ultimately fuck everything up.

Also I vote not to change the forum color scheme. This one is good.

I personally hate it, but because it's important that people are afraid of changes, I've compromised with the idea of giving individual forums their own look and feel via style-sheets, while keeping the main general discussion areas untouched.

And we'll change the fucking gold color that everyone hates that I picked at random.

Ever noticed that nearly all the people complaining about the gold are the ones that aren't in it? Save for Dorian (who seems to simply enjoy complaining for the sake of complaining). I'm not trying to imply anything, just an observation. Funny how that works.

My alternative is just to have an open forum to discuss ways to "improve" the forum.

And have it filled with hyperactive tweens who make up most of the comic fanbase posting the same shitty ideas over and over again (make a Bell sprite walk all over the bottom of the forum all the time!!!), for which we would eventually have to start punishing them, over and over again. Yes, thank you. Your idea is noted. It's not good enough. Please do try again.

Well, perhaps the issue is I frankly doubt the necessity of the project to begin with. I sure didn't sign up for the massive sweeping changes that appear to be proposed.

So if Dave comes by like a hurricane and tears the whole forum through its own arsehole out into something different without ever asking anybody for opinions or giving a warning, and then his bum keeps mooning over the forums so all you can do is raise your fist to the sky and curse the name of god it's all fine to you? But when BR goes out of his way to offer choices, discuss it with the userbase, ask opinions and ideas to implement, you say it's shit? You have a chance to be a part of this and get some of your ideas in, that's plenty for a regular user to be able to do really.

If you want input from forumers about how to improve the forum, then perhaps make a thread like this one and leave it stickied where people can just go and suggest things and discuss said changes. Who gives a shit if they're a veteran or if they've been here a week. All that really matters is the quality of their ideas/suggestions.

See: first paragraph.

No matter how many times you say 'it's not going to turn into an elitist club' it's always going to look that way to outsiders.

Ultimately there are going to be multiple "layers" of elitism. We intend them to be sufficiently spaced out to make them "within reach" of regular users but requiring their contribution in one way or another.

Also, you're making it sound as if what we're undertaking here was the first time any forum has ever done, ever. Or something that's been done but never worked. It has, actually. It's not the perfect solution to some of our troubles, obviously, but it's a fairly good one. Ever been to "some random average forum"? So many of them have arbitrary "ranks" based on the user's time on the forum or the post count. You know, thesethings. Most of the times there are so many of these ranks that they don't feel elitist at all. Well, that's where we're heading. But of course, we believe we can do better than just giving people titles based on their ability to spam out posts.

Also I vote not to change the forum color scheme. This one is good.

If the updated forum permits, I will be voting for enabling a choice of forum styles with one including the current one. Not as the default one though, since people are likely to put quite a bit of work into the new styles, and we don't just want to make them to toss them out.

I'm very disappointed in the direction things are going, I wanted on board to help out on reorganizing the site. I've seen no progress discussed on the forums. If there's some kind of gold/moderator discussion going on OUTSIDE the forums, it's pretty damn annoying.

So far there have been a few reasonable threads for small fixes around the forum. And right now we are waiting for the progress on the style sheets. The reason there seems to be a bit of a hold-up is mainly because it's hard to move on to real changes when the forum is still not updated yet. And since most of us have no power over that issue, we have to keep working on everything else. I will also have to break your bubble if you're expecting this whole thing to go down in two weeks total. No. It may last anywhere from 2 to 4 months total. There's no need to rush most of these things. The only things we are trying to rush is the update, because BR wants to open up the registration already.

But yeah, as much as you claim "visual incentive", that's pretty much bullshit. Are the mods working on this forum because they wanted a pretty color for their name? Are you trying to help this forum because you like your name in gold?

Colours are there, as somebody pointed out, for people to be able to distinguish who they are talking to. Haven't there already been rules in place about "showing respect for the veterans" for a long time? It's hard to expect the newbies to be respectful of users that don't look respected. It's also supposed to be something new members see and wonder "how do you get that?". Giving people who have it incentive to be on their best behaviour in order to keep it, and those who don't have it incentive to better themselves to get it. This will not necessarily be the gold club though, but a different group.

Oh yeah. I forgot. People outside of Spam don't know that the Gold Card Club is a title based on an inside joke. Huh.

And subject to change. Just like the members list, and the colour.

Oh so it is Spam's personal club.

If you're trying not to sound butthurt I'm afraid you're doing it wrong.

Also, BR is ninja.

This post is intended for information only. Please do not reply to this message as responses cannot be read or acknowledged due to the stupidity of the user.

i like how snafu has its own little version of democracy to argue overmakes things more interesting

People often like to argue before they take the time to seriously consider things. Look at it from the perspective of confirmation bias. It's either A) Accepting that Gold club is supposedly awesome, but in turn, somewhat admitting Spam is awesome, which goes against beliefs or B) Complain along with the majority because it seems like a win-win for that discomforting nudge at your brain.

Now consider it from both sides.A) Non-golds don't like golds for supposed elitism and internet reformationB) Golds don't like non-golds for supposed butthurt and stagnancy

The things one should consider in an argument is what both sides are truly standing for, which is for most of the time despite being quite surprising; not the opposite of what you're trying to do on purpose. Non-golds may just be uncomfortable with the fact that sudden change may spiral out of control, since it does seem quite fine in the forums right now. However, golds are aiming for a reformation and better site since the place has been stuck like this for a while now.

My faculties may not be functioning at optimum levels due to sleep deprivation, so yeah, enjoy some psychobabble.

I am thou... Thou art I... From the sea of thy soul, I come...Soulchild: u thnk evry thng stupid.DaCrum: Warbear, why did you suddenly become pretty cool? Stop it.BR:love is just a boner everyone is looking to fart on warbearSnafu Mods Suck 2k14(except for me #yoloswag)

Q.U. wrote:Ever noticed that nearly all the people complaining about the gold are the ones that aren't in it? Save for Dorian (who seems to simply enjoy complaining for the sake of complaining). I'm not trying to imply anything, just an observation. Funny how that works.

I'm not bothering being part of these conversations anymore if people keep saying shit like this. I gave my well reasoned argument. You're welcome to disagree but drop the 'Dorian hates everything just to hate everything' crap.

Let's be honest, there's people not from spam in it because other people thought of it as spam's personal club before Bob did. I'm looking right at the thread where you guys started talking about getting non-spam people into it. I'm also looking at the thread about Dorian calling it a dumb idea and some of you getting massively butthurt about it, 4 days before you started talking about getting non-spam people into it. I think we had more discussion over the pros and cons of the gold club in those couple days in the Weirdness than there is in the entire gold forum.

BR wrote:Want me to turn them off for a day to see how many bots we ban in the next 24 hours?

Yes actually, we need to test the waters and we can't actually hope of getting new members with the board locked down. If you're really worried about it give some people the ability to move threads to a trash bin hidden forum... actually do that last part anyways and move all bot threads there so we can get an accurate count.

If we can't get some sort of anti-bot registration feature implemented in the near future we'll have to take steps to counter bot posts themselves, as is we're just going to kill ourselves. A trickle of one or two new members every now and then is still better than no new members ever.

Riz wrote:I liked the older color better (this one is wimpy I like bolder colors) but it's just a color so it doesn't matter!

I think anyone who's seen your eye piercing CSS suggestion could have guessed at that.

Let's be honest, there's people not from spam in it because other people thought of it as spam's personal club before Bob did. I'm looking right at the thread where you guys started talking about getting non-spam people into it. I'm also looking at the thread about Dorian calling it a dumb idea and some of you getting massively butthurt about it, 4 days before you started talking about getting non-spam people into it. I think we had more discussion over the pros and cons of the gold club in those couple days in the Weirdness than there is in the entire gold forum.

The whole reason that thread exists is because you lot wouldn't believe that it wasn't just a circlejerk for Spammers.

I am thou... Thou art I... From the sea of thy soul, I come...Soulchild: u thnk evry thng stupid.DaCrum: Warbear, why did you suddenly become pretty cool? Stop it.BR:love is just a boner everyone is looking to fart on warbearSnafu Mods Suck 2k14(except for me #yoloswag)

Considering that the Gold Card Club thing started off as a joke, it's reasonable that it was filled with just Spam members. It wasn't until later that it was realized "oh this might actually be of importance, lets add non-spam members". The description stil reads "I can actually do this, lol." so it's obviously quite not finished. If it was I'd imagine the gold forum would have a bit more of an official description, instead of one that's in some sort of transitioning period.

Because that's what this all is, a transitioning period. Seeing what works, what doesn't, and getting feedback from all members. We finally have an opportunity to change this dying forum, but you keep stepping on every little change without offering a way to help, saying "oh this is stupid, it's not gonna work, I don't like it, wah"

BeeAre is doing his best but he's being stonewalled by someone who hasn't cared in a very long time. We're stuck with dead comics, dead sub-forums, and quite possibly a large redundancy with the Spam name change and the Snafu general section. But continue to belittle every little thing if it makes you feel better, I care about this forum and I welcome the change, I'd like to see it thrive with quality members someday.

There's nothing to do. Get some people to deal with bots, maybe add back custom titles or some neat trinket. I mean, nothing will stop this place from dying, so I really don't see why we need shiny new layouts when the current one is nice.

Calek wrote:Considering that the Gold Card Club thing started off as a joke, it's reasonable that it was filled with just Spam members. It wasn't until later that it was realized "oh this might actually be of importance, lets add non-spam members".

Now there's some honesty, it's quite refreshing.

Because that's what this all is, a transitioning period. Seeing what works, what doesn't, and getting feedback from all members. We finally have an opportunity to change this dying forum, but you keep stepping on every little change without offering a way to help, saying "oh this is stupid, it's not gonna work, I don't like it, wah"

BeeAre is doing his best but he's being stonewalled by someone who hasn't cared in a very long time. We're stuck with dead comics, dead sub-forums, and quite possibly a large redundancy with the Spam name change and the Snafu general section. But continue to belittle every little thing if it makes you feel better, I care about this forum and I welcome the change, I'd like to see it thrive with quality members someday.

Just remember not to fall into the trap of change for the sake of change. A lot of the reason no one has asked for major changes (contrary to Mirak's 'they don't have an incentive to' and ignoring Dave never being here) is because they're content with much of the forum (like the current design for instance), the majority wouldn't still be here if they weren't. The only major concern that I think people share is the activity of the forum as whole, it's more important that anything related to tiers of users or the style sheets.

Seriously, you people gotta stop being do goddamn pessimist. "Oh, it's dying and we say it should die instead of hoping for a better future".

Some of us speak from experiencing these things you know, in general once a forum loses it's original draw it's very difficult to get more users. No amount of changes to the forums themselves will fix this problem if we don't draw users in to see those changes.

Also forums are by nature insular, one has to be careful not to make them more insular when trying to draw in users.

If anyone has any suggestions or links to the methods for preventing bots registration/posts I will link them in a thread I've made in the gold forum, post away. I only ask that you at least make sure it's intended for phpbb boards.

Anyway it seems like all the mods and admins seem pretty damn set on trying out this gold thing and I'm pretty set on considering it a bad idea. Neither of us can really prove how things will be affected by it so I guess you guys might as well keep it around and see what happens. I reserve the right to say I told you so if it just causes more problems than it solves, though.

You think it's a bad idea, but to be honest, you still have a very vague idea of what we're actually aiming for, and what we imagine the final product to look like. So no, we cannot take all your complaints fully seriously, because you guys still haven't been filled in properly yet, and like it or not, you don't really know too well what you are talking about. Literally. Also, we do intend to give it a run, if it does turn out hopeless and fails we will tweak, change, or dismantle and scrap that system, but we will damn well try to make it work, and make it work in our favour no less.

Also, to people advocating against much change, especially those who don't want changes in the forum style and looks. Is this, the current version of the forum style, your favourite? How long has it been your favourite? Probably soon after or shortly after it was implemented. What style was your favourite before that change? The previous one? If so, since when has that one been your favourite? Think back and be honest. Whenever there was a style you liked and felt like this was the best one yet, how would you respond to an announcement that the forum style was going to change?

We're walking a fine line between "change for the sake of change" and "no change because we got used to it as it is".

This post is intended for information only. Please do not reply to this message as responses cannot be read or acknowledged due to the stupidity of the user.

Sentios wrote:Just remember not to fall into the trap of change for the sake of change. A lot of the reason no one has asked for major changes (contrary to Mirak's 'they don't have an incentive to' and ignoring Dave never being here) is because they're content with much of the forum (like the current design for instance), the majority wouldn't still be here if they weren't. The only major concern that I think people share is the activity of the forum as whole, it's more important that anything related to tiers of users or the style sheets.

Now this irritates me just a little bit. This forum's stagnation comes from the users' being content? That's funny, because the active and current moderation and administration staff are not content at all with the forums' current state of being.

This is not a change for the sake of change, Sentios, and your blindness to our fucking jobs prods me towards irritability. We, the mods? We're users of the forums as well, and we can see what you can't, and you want to fucking lecture us about how dangerous a forum's change can go? With the attitude of "Let's Just Let It Die", you think that makes us, AND SPECIFICALLY ME, not want to introduce something, anything that might help stabilize the forums that apparently everyone is fucking content with stagnation and death?

Some of us speak from experiencing these things you know, in general once a forum loses it's original draw it's very difficult to get more users. No amount of changes to the forums themselves will fix this problem if we don't draw users in to see those changes.

Recognizing this challenge is a part of why we are attempting to use this system at all.

Also forums are by nature insular, one has to be careful not to make them more insular when trying to draw in users.

Do you think offering privilege and friendship in an upwardly mobile way is an insulating idea?

How about convincing Dave to make this not Snafu's forums, but Shark Robot's forums, so he has a hub he actually fucking cares about, so we can actually have an influx of members, if his merchandising scales are increasing as reported by people who have actually gone to cons.

If anyone has any suggestions or links to the methods for preventing bots registration/posts I will link them in a thread I've made in the gold forum, post away. I only ask that you at least make sure it's intended for phpbb boards.

Saving grace; at least you do seem to actually care, brudski, otherwise you (and a few others) would've seriously gotten me as close to angry as I've gotten in years (because it's physically unhealthy for me to be angry).

I'm not a programmer: I am here to administrate issues through authority and delegation by way of taking advice from the userbase to improve the forums. I don't think that, even at my current level of administration, I have access to "Founder" level permissions that would allow me to upgrade the software. The links you've provided are helpful for Founders. For people who made their forums. I don't discount your contribution despite them looking a bit irrelevant, with a lot of the options referring to introducing Captchas, et cetra, which I am not sure I can do.

It's why I've been asking for ideas and help. Because we need to change. At this point, the likely best thing would be if you all literally emailed Dave using the Shark Robot site contact email with the subject title "PLEASE RESPOND TO BR".